SD Twizy Vehicle Simulation

Gazebo simulation packages for the SD Twizy vehicle

Requirements:

- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

- ROS Kinetic ros-kinetic-desktop-full

- Catkin Command Line Tools catkin_tools

- Gazebo ros-kinetic-gazebo-ros-pkgs

This model has been tested with Gazebo 7.16. Run gazebo --version to make sure you have the correct version installed.
To update to Gazebo 7.16, do:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'
wget http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Setup your workspace:

A. Create a catkin workspace:

To setup your workspace after installing ROS Kinetic and catkin tools, do:

source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash
mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/
catkin build # OR catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash

For more information, visit create_a_workspace

B. Initialize your catkin workspace:

Navigate to the root of your catkin workspace, if you are not already with cd ~/catkin_ws. Initialize your workspace:

catkin init

C. Clone this repository or copy its contents at your ~/catkin_ws/src folder of the catkin workspace you just initialized.

D. Navigate to your workspace, install the dependencies and build the simulation

cd ~/catkin_ws
rosdep install --from-paths src/ --ignore-src -r -y
catkin build

# OR catkin build sd_robot sd_control sd_description sd_control_msgs 
# OR catkin_make if you previously built with catkin_make

After the built has successfully finished, source your workspace:

source devel/setup.bash

E. Launch the simulation:

This launches the vehicle model in Gazebo and RViz for visualizing the sensors' output.

roslaunch sd_robot sd_twizy_empty.launch
# OR roslaunch sd_robot sd_twizy_worlds.launch enable_rviz:=true world:=empty

You might need to update your ignition-math version sudo apt upgrade libignition-math2

Sensors

LiDAR: VLP - 16 Velodyne
Cameras: 8 x Blackfly S 2.3MP
The scripts for the sensors are written based on the common scripts that exist for sensors in Gazebo.

Controlling the Robot

Joystick

The robot supports the generic Linux joystick controllers. The sd_control package contains a node to turn joystick commands into control messages that drive the throttle and steering of the model. To use this, launch a simulation as described above, then run the following:

roslaunch sd_control sd_twizy_control_teleop.launch

You can map specific buttons using the parameters defined in that launch file. For instance, the following uses the left stick for throttle, the right stick for steering, and right button (RB) to enable control on a Logitech F710 Gamepad:

roslaunch sd_control sd_twizy_control_teleop.launch enable_button:=5 throttle_axis:=1 steer_axis:=2

Keyboard

The simulation can also be controlled by the keyboard. To launch the sd_teleop_keyboard node, run the following:

./src/streetdrone_model/sd_control/keyboardlaunch.sh 

And follow the instructions on the terminal

SD-VehicleInterface

Find it here: https://github.com/streetdrone-home/SD-VehicleInterface
This package is responsible for the communication between the StreetDrone vehicles and ROS based self-driving software stacks.

The interface bridges the gap between ROS kinetic and the OpenCAN vehicle interface of the StreetDrone Xenos Control Unit (XCU) integrated into the SD Twizy R&D and SD ENV200 vehicles. Follow the instructions here

Clone or copy the SD-VehicleInterface on the src/ of your catkin workspace, build it according to the instructions on the README and launch it alongside the simulation with:

roslaunch sd_vehicle_interface sd_vehicle_interface.launch sd_vehicle:=twizy sd_gps_imu:=none sd_simulation_mode:=true

Display the robot only in rviz:

First, make sure you have rviz installed, by doing:

cd ~/catkin_ws
roscore
rviz

If you don't have rviz installed, do sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-rviz*.
The configuration file of the SD Twizy is located at ~/catkin_ws/src/streetdrone_model/sd_robot/config/sd_twizy.rviz